Towards the Great Peace - Ralph Adams Cram
Neither man nor his community possesses any _absolute_ rights; they are
all conditioned on how they are exercised. If they are not so
conditioned they become privilege, which is a right not subject to
conditions, and privilege is one of the things republicanism and
democracy and every other effort towards human emancipation have set
themselves up to destroy. Even the "right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" is conditioned by the manner of use, and the same
is true of every other and unspecified right. I do not propose to speak
here of more than one aspect of this self-evident truth, but the single
instance I cite is one that bears closely on the question of our
industrial and economic situation; it is the responsibility to society
of property or capital on the one hand and of labour on the other, when
both invoke their "rights" to justify them in oppressing the general
public in the pursuit of their own natural interests.
During the Middle Ages, just as the political theory maintained that
while a king ruled by divine right, this right gave him no authority to
govern wrong, so the social theory held that while a man had a right to
private property he had no right to use it against society, nor could
the labourer use his own rights to the injury of the same institution.
Power, property and labour must be used as a _function_, i.e., "an
activity which embodies and expresses the idea of social purpose."
Unless I am mistaken, this is at the basis of our "common law."
As Mediaevalism gave place to the Renaissance this Christian idea was
abandoned, and increasingly the obligation was severed from the right,
which so became that odious thing, privilege. Intolerable in its
injustice and oppression, this privilege, which by the middle of the
eighteenth century had become the attribute of the aristocracy, was
completely overthrown, in France first of all, and a new doctrine of
rights was enunciated and put in operation. Unfortunately the result was
in essence simply a transforming of privilege from one body to another,
for the old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitant
of acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the Middle
Ages; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusively
individualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists who
formulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgation
synchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion of
industrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead of
England in accepting the new system, they hardened into an iron-clad
scheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holders
and manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy of
Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham and the Manchester School, generally, and the
evolutionary theories of the exponents of Darwinism, and abetted by an
endless series of statutes, the idea of the exemption of property
holders from any responsibility to society for the use of their
property, became a fixed part of the mental equipment of modernism.
Precisely the same thing happened politically and socially. Rights were
personal and implied no necessary obligation to society as a whole; they
were personal attributes and as such to be defended at all costs.
Now the result of this profound error as to the existence, nature and
limitation of these personal rights has meant simply the destruction of
a righteous and unified society which works by cooeperation and
fellowship, and the substitution of individuals and corporate bodies who
work by competition, strife and mutual aggression towards the attainment
of all they can get under the impulse of what was once praised as
"enlightened self interest." In other words--war. The conflict that
began in 1914 was not a war hurled into the midst of a white peace, it
was only a military war arising in the centre of a far greater social
war, for there is no other word that is descriptive. Rights that are not
contingent on the due discharge of duties and obligations are but
hateful privilege; privilege has issue in selfishness and egotism, which
in turn work themselves out in warfare and in the hatred that both
precedes and follows conflict.
The net result of a century and a half of industrialism is avarice,
warfare and hate. Society can continue even when avariciousness is
rampant--for a time--and warfare of one sort or another seems
inseparable from humanity, at all events it has always been so, but
hatred is another matter, for it is the negation of social life and is
its solvent. Anger passes; it is sometimes even righteous, but hatred is
synonymous with death in that it dissolves every unit, reducing it to
its component parts and subjecting each of these to dissolution in its
turn. Righteous anger roused the nations into the war that hate had
engendered, but hate has followed after and for the moment is
victorious. Russia seethes with hatred and is perishing of its poison,
while there is not another country in Europe, of those that were
involved in the war, where the same is not true in varying degrees;
hatred of race for race, of nation for nation, of class for class, of
one social or industrial or economic or political institution for
another. This, above all else, is the disintegrating influence, and
against it no social organism, no civilization can stand. Unless it is
abrogated it means an ending of another epoch of human life, a period of
darkness and another beginning, some time after the poison has been
worked out by misery, adversity and forced repentance.
It is this prevalence of hatred, reinforced by avarice and perpetuated
by incessant warfare, that negatives all the efforts that are made
towards effecting a correspondence between the divided interests that
are the concomitant of industrialism. Strikes and lockouts, trades
unions and employers' associations as they are now constituted and as
they now operate, syndicalism and Bolshevism and proletarian
dictatorships, protective tariffs and commercial spheres of influence,
propaganda and subsidized newspapers are all energized by the principle
of hate, and no good thing can come of any of them. Nor is it enough to
work for the re-establishment of justice even by those methods of
righteousness, and with the impulse towards righteousness, which are so
different from those which are functioning at present along the lines of
contemporary industrial "reform." Justice is a "natural" virtue with a
real place in society, but the only saving force today is a supernatural
virtue. This, amongst other things, Christ brought into the world and
left as the saving force amongst the race He had redeemed and in the
society reconstituted in accordance with His will. This supernatural
virtue is Charity, sometimes expressed in the simpler form of Love, the
essence of the social code of Christianity and the symbol of the New
Dispensation as justice was the symbol of the Old. Just in so far as a
man or a cult or an interest or a corporation or a state or a generation
or a race, relinquishes charity as its controlling spirit, in so far it
relinquishes its place in Christian society and its claim to the
Christian name, while it is voided of all power for good or possibility
of continuance. Where charity is gone, intellectual capacity, effectual
power, and even justice itself become, not energies of good, but potent
contributions to evil. Is this supernatural gift of charity a mark of
contemporary civilization? Does it manifest itself with power today in
the dealings between class and class, between interest and interest,
between nation and nation? If not, then we have forfeited the name of
Christian and betrayed Christian civilization into the hands of its
enemies, while our efforts towards saving what is left to us of a once
consistent and righteous society will be without result except as an
acceleration of the now headlong process of dissolution.
I am not charging any class or any interest or any people with exclusive
apostacy. In the end there is little to choose between one or another.
Labour is not more culpable than capital, nor the proletarian than the
industrial magnate and the financier, nor the nominal secularist than
the nominal religionist. Nor am I charging conscious and willful
acceptance of wrong in the place of right. It is the institution itself,
industrialism as it has come to be, with all its concomitants and
derivatives, that has betrayed man to his disgrace and his society to
condemnation, and so long as this system endures so long will recovery
be impossible and regeneration a vain thing vainly imagined. Charity,
that is to say, fellowship, generosity, pity, self-sacrifice, chivalry,
all that is comprehended in the thing that Christ was, and preached, and
promulgated as the fundamental law of life, cannot come back to the
world so long as avarice, warfare and hate continue to exist, and
through Charity alone can we find the solution of the industrial and
economic problem that _must_ be solved under penalty of social death.
V
THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY
In these essays, which look towards a new social synthesis, I find
myself involved in somewhat artificial subdivisions. Industrial, social
and political forces all react one upon another, and the complete social
product is the result of the interplay of these forces, cooerdinated and
vitalized by philosophy, education and religion. To isolate each factor
and consider it separately is apt to result in false values, but there
seems no other way in which the subject, which is essentially one, may
be divided into the definite parts which are consequent on the form of a
course of lectures. In considering now the political estate of the human
social organism it will be evident that I hold that this must be
contingent on many elements that reveal themselves in a contributory
industrial system, in the principles that are embodied in social
relationships, and in the general scheme of such a working philosophy of
life as may predominate amongst the component parts of the synthetic
society which is the product of all these varied energies and the
organic forms through which they operate.
Political organization has always been a powerful preoccupation of
mankind, and the earliest records testify to its antiquity. The
regulation of human intercourse, the delimiting of rights and
privileges, protection of life and property, the codifying of laws,
vague, various and conflicting, the making of new laws and the enforcing
of those that have taken organic form; all these and an hundred other
governmental functions, appeal strongly to the mind and touch closely on
personal interests. It is no wonder that the political history of human
society is the most varied, voluminous and popular in its appeal. At the
present moment this problem has, in general, an even more poignant
appeal, and no rival except the industrial problem, for in both cases
systems that, up to ten years ago, were questioned only by a minority
(large in the case of industry, small and obscure in the case of
government) have since completely broken down, and it is probable that a
political system which had existed throughout the greater part of Europe
and the Americas for a century and a half, almost without serious
criticism, has now as many assailants as industrialism itself.
The change is startling from the "Triumphant Democracy" period, a space
of time as clearly defined and as significant in its characteristics as
the "Victorian Era." Before the war, during the war, and throughout the
earlier years of the even more devastating "peace," the system which
followed the ruin of the Renaissance autocracies, the essential elements
in which were an ever-widening suffrage, parliamentary government, and
the universal operation of the quantitative standard of values, was
never questioned or criticised, except in matters of detail. That it was
the most perfect governmental scheme ever devised and that it must
continue forever, was held to be axiomatic, and with few exceptions the
remedy proposed for such faults as could not possibly escape detection
was a still further extension of the democratic principle. Even the war
itself was held to be "a war to make the world safe for democracy." It
is significant that the form in which this saying now frequently appears
is one in which the word "from" is substituted in place of the word
"for." It is useless to blink the fact that there is now a distrust of
parliamentary and representative government which is almost universal
and this distrust, which is becoming widespread, reaches from the
Bolshevism of Russia on the one hand, through many intermediate social
and intellectual stages, to the conservative elements in England and the
United States, and the fast-strengthening royalist "bloc" in France.
In many unexpected places there is visible a profound sense that
something is so fundamentally wrong that palliatives are useless and
some drastic reform is necessary, a reform that may almost amount to
revolution. Lord Bryce still believes in democracy in spite of his keen
realizations of its grievous defects, because, as he says, hope is an
inextinguishable quality of the human soul. Mr. Chesterton preaches
democracy in principle while condemning its mechanism and its workings
with his accustomed vigour; the Adamses renounce democracy and all its
works while offering no hint as to what could consistently take its
place with any better chance of success, while the royalists excoriate
it in unmeasured terms and preach an explicit return to monarchy.
Meanwhile international Bolshevism, hating the thing as violently as do
kings in exile, substitutes a crude and venal autocracy, while organized
labour, as a whole, works for the day when a "class-conscious
proletariat" will have taken matters into its own hands and established
a new aristocracy of privilege in which the present working classes will
hold the whip-hand. Meanwhile the more educated element of the general
public withdraws itself more and more from political affairs, going its
own way and making the best of a bad job it thinks itself taught by
experience it cannot mend.
It is useless to deny that government, in the character of its
personnel, the quality of its output, the standard of its service and
the degree of its beneficence has been steadily deteriorating during the
last century and has now reached, in nearly every civilized country, a
deplorably low level. Popular representatives are less and less men of
character and ability; legislation is absurd in quantity, short-sighted,
frivolous, inquisitorial, and in a large measure prompted by selfish
interests; administration is reckless, wasteful and inefficient, while
it is overloaded in numbers, without any particular aptitude on the part
of its members, and in a measure controlled by personal or corporate
interests. The whole system is in bad odour for it is shot through and
through with the greed for money and influence, while the cynicism of
the professional politician and the low average of character,
intelligence and manners of the strata of society that increasingly are
usurping all power, work towards producing that general contempt and
aversion that have become so evident of late and that are a menace to
society no less than that of the decaying institution itself.
Confronted by a situation such as this, the natural tendency of those
who suffer under it, either in their material interests or their ideals,
is to condemn the mechanism, perhaps even the very principles for the
operation of which the various machines were devised. Some reject the
whole scheme of representative, parliamentary government, and, failing
any plausible substitute, are driven back on some form of the soviet, or
even government by industrial groups. Those that go to the limit and
reject the whole scheme of democracy are in still worse plight for they
have no alternative to offer except a restored monarchy, and this, the
_terminus ad quem_ of their logic, their courage will not permit them to
avow.
It is a dilemma, but forced, I believe, by the fatal passion of the man
of modernism for the machine, the mechanical device, the material
equivalent for a thing that has no equivalent, and that is the personal
character of the constituents of society and the working factors in a
political organism. There was never a more foolish saying than that
which is so frequently and so boastfully used: "a government of laws and
not of men." This is the exact reversal of what should be recognized as
a self-evident truth, viz, that the quality of the men, not the nature
of the laws or of the administrative machine, is the determining factor
in government. You may take any form of government ever devised by man,
monarchy, aristocracy, republic, democracy, yes, or soviet, and if the
community in which this government operates has a working majority of
men of character, intelligence and spiritual energy, it will be a good
government, whereas if the working majority is deficient in these
characteristics, or if it makes itself negligible by abstention from
public affairs it will be a bad government. There is no one political
system which is right while all others are wrong. The monarchy of St.
Louis was better than the Third Republic, as this is better than was the
monarchy of Louis XV. The aristocracy of Washington was better than the
democracy of this year of grace, as this in itself is better than the
late junker aristocracy of Prussia. You cannot substitute a machine in
place of character, you cannot supersede life by a theory.
This does not mean that the form of government is of no moment, it is of
the utmost importance for I cannot too often insist that the organic
life of society is the resultant of two forces; spiritual energy working
through and upon the material forms towards their improvement or--when
this energy is weak or distorted--their degeneration; the material forms
acting as a stimulus towards the development of spiritual energy through
association and environment that are favourable, or towards its
weakening and distortion when these are deterrents because of their own
degraded or degrading nature. If it is futile to look for salvation
through the mechanism, it is equally futile to try to act directly and
exclusively on the character of the social constituents in the patient
hope that their defects may be remedied, and the preponderance of
character of high value achieved, before catastrophe overtakes the
experiment. Life is as sacramental as the Christian religion and
Christian philosophy; neither the spiritual substance nor the material
accidents can operate alone but only in a conjunction so intimate that
it is to all intents and purposes--that is, for the interests and
purposes of God in human life--a perfect unity. However completely and
even passionately we may realize the determining factor of spiritual
energy as this manifests itself through personal character, however
deeply we may distrust the machine, we are bound to recognize the
paramount necessity of the active interplay of both within the limits of
life as we know it on the earth, and therefore it is very much our
concern that the machine, whether it is industrial, political,
educational, ecclesiastical or social, is as perfect in its nature and
stimulating in its operations as we are able to compass.
In the present liquidation of values, theories and institutions we are
bound therefore to scrutinize each operating agency of human society, to
see wherein it has failed and how it can be bettered, and the problem
before us now is the political organism.
Now it appears that in the past there have been just two methods whereby
a civil polity has come into existence and established itself for a
short period or a long. These two methods are, first, unpremeditated and
sometimes unconscious growth; second, calculated and self-conscious
revolution. The first method has produced communities, states and
empires that frequently worked well and lasted for long periods; the
second has had issue in nothing that has endured for any length of time
or has left a record of beneficence. Evolution in government is in
accord with the processes of life, even to the extent that it is always
after a time followed by degeneration; revolution in government is the
throwing of a monkey-wrench into the machinery by a disaffected workman,
with the wrecking of the machine, the violent stoppage of the works, and
frequently the sudden death of the worker as a consequence. The English
monarchy from Duke William to Henry VIII, is a case of normal growth by
minor changes and modifications, but its subsequent history has been one
of revolutions, six or seven having occurred in the last four hundred
years; the scheme which now holds, though precariously, is the result of
the great democratic revolution accomplished during the reign of Queen
Victoria. The free monarchies of Europe which began to take form during
the long period of the Dark Ages and pursued their admirable course well
through the Middle Ages, were also normal and slow growths; but the
revolutions that have followed the Great War will meet a different fate,
several of them, indeed, have counted their existence in months and have
already passed into history.
If we are wise we shall discount revolutions for the future, for nothing
but ill is accomplished by denying life and exalting the ingenious
substitutes of ambitious and presumptuous Frankensteins; the result is
too often a monster that works cleverly at first, and with a semblance
of human intelligence, but in the end shows itself as a destroyer. Our
task is to envisage, as clearly as possible, the political systems
established amongst us, note their weaknesses either in themselves or in
their relationship to society as it is, and then try to find those
remedies that can be applied without any violent methods of dislocation
or substitution; always bearing in mind the fact that the energizing
force that will make them live, preserve them from deterioration, and
adapt them to conditions which will ever change, is the spiritual force
of human personality, and that this force comes only through the
character qualities of the individual components of society.
Now in considering our own case in this day and generation there are
first of all two matters to be borne in mind. One is that we shall do
well to confine our inquiry to the United States, for while the defects
we shall have to point out are common to practically all the
contemporary governments of Europe and the Americas, our own enginery is
different in certain ways, and our troubles are also different between
one example and another. After all, our immediate interest must lie with
our own national problems. The other point is that in criticising the
workings of government in America we are not necessarily criticising its
founders or the creators of its original constitutions, charters, and
other mechanisms. The Constitution of the United States, for example,
was conceived to meet one series of perfectly definite conditions that
have now been superseded by others which are radically, and even
diametrically different. The original Constitution was a most able
instrument of organic law, but just because it did fit so perfectly
conditions as they were four generations ago, it applies but
indifferently to present circumstances, and even less well than the
Founders hoped would be the case; for the reason that the amendments
which were provided for have seldom taken cognizance of these changing
conditions, and even when this was done the amendments themselves have
not been wisely drawn, while certain of them have been actually
disastrous in their nature, others frivolous, and yet more the result of
ephemeral and hysterical ebullitions of an engineered public opinion.
The same may be said of state constitutions and municipal charters,
which have suffered incessant changes, mostly unfortunate and
ill-judged, except during the last few years, when a spirit of real
wisdom and constructiveness has shown itself, though sporadically and as
yet with some timidity. The reforms, such as they are, are largely in
the line of palliatives; the deep-lying factors, those that control both
success and failure, are seldom touched upon. The necessary courage--or
perhaps temerity--is lacking. What is needed is such a clear seeing of
conditions, and such an approach, as manifested themselves in the
Constitutional Convention of the United States, for in spite of the many
compromises that were in the end necessary to placate a public opinion
not untouched by prejudice, superstition and selfishness, the great
document--and even more the records of the debates--still brilliantly
set forth both the clear-seeing and the lofty attitude that
characterized the Convention. Had these men been gathered together
today, even the same men, they would frame a very different document,
for they took conditions and men as they were, and, with an
indestructible hope to glorify their common sense, they produced a
masterpiece. It is in the same spirit that we must approach our problem
of today.